When it comes to writing a memoir, many people confuse it with an autobiography. The truth is, these are two different types of writing and two different types of books. In order to write an effective memoir, you first have to be able to tell the difference between the two. Whichever one you decide to write depends upon how you are planning on telling the story in the first place. If you decide that the story you’re trying to tell is more suited for an autobiography, you can write that instead, or you can change some things around to make it a memoir instead. Let’s take a look

The Memoir

The memoir usually revolves around a series of memories. It is not someone’s life story. It often focuses on a single seminal event the changes a person’s life. Memoirs have pretty prominent themes and there is a single subject often that is the moral of the story.

Sometimes, the story is how extraordinary a person’s life is or what happens to them that is completely unique to what is happening to other people. But that is not always the case. This is not the only type of memoir that is out there. Sometimes, memoir is written about an ordinary life but the narrator has some sort of profound insight that makes it worth reading anyway.

The problem with writing a memoir is that it can be really difficult to get one published. It has to be extremely good. This is because publishers get a lot of these types of books, and the market for them is very small. The books that are written around these events usually have a pretty solid narrative path and the voice of the writer has to be really compelling.

The main thing that distinguishes the memoir from other types of books is that it details events in a way that makes people see certain human truths that help them make sense of their lives. That doesn’t mean that there is overt morality lessons included in a memoir, it just turns out that way because of how the book is written. In fact, the memoir is one of the hardest types of books to write.

The Autobiography

The autobiography is a book about your life. Most people will not want to read a book about your life. The exception is, of course, if you are celebrity or well-known figure the people are curious about. But for the ordinary person, writing an autobiography might be cathartic and of interest to your family and friends, but probably won’t go much farther than that or even get published.

The bottom line is that there is some pretty stiff competition when it comes to writing a memoir. However, if you think you have the right events and insight to be able to tell that story, then you should definitely give it a try because you might be able to change someone’s life.

As a self-publishing author, one of the things that back matter does is give you an opportunity to interest people in some of your other work. However, the way that you go about it can vary from author to author. There are some pretty specific things that you should do no matter what genre you write in or how many books you have, but there are other tasks that are more difficult to figure out. In this article, we’ll be looking at exactly how you should include your other work in the back matter of each book or story you publish. Here are five tips to help you.

List Only Relevant Work

First, you want to make sure that you are only listing relevant work in your back matter. You might have published in different genres – or different types of work within the same genre – but what you want to keep in mind is that when a reader finishes a book that they liked, they are instantly looking for something that was just like the last good thing that they read. If you include other work that doesn’t fit into that description, then you might be losing the opportunity to get them to buy another book.

Include the Book Cover

Make sure that you include the book cover with the blurb from your story. Your book cover sells books – period. If it doesn’t, then you need another book cover. The picture doesn’t have to be big. In fact, it should be about the size of an Amazon thumbnail. Make sure you figure out how to format a book as well.

Include a Synopsis of the Story

Even if you are including a chapter of your story, put a synopsis at the top so that people read it and get intrigued by the story and want to read your excerpt. Make it a short paragraph in italics right below (or to the right) of your book cover and then start your chapter excerpt right below that. If it is not going to be joined with a chapter excerpt, then put it below the book cover.

Include the First Chapter

Even though you want to limit the amount of back matter space you use, you do want to include an excerpt of one book. If you are writing a series, this should be the next book in the series. If not, then just another book that you think they will like. Include the first chapter unless it is exceptionally long.

Include an Amazon Link

Make sure that people are able to buy the book by including a link directly to the book’s page on Amazon.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that you want to keep people reading your stuff after they finish something you have written. It is a lot harder to bring them back to you after they have started reading someone else. If you want more great advice on writing blurbs and other self-publishing topics, visit Kindlepreneur.com where there are plenty of articles that are packed with information.